Merely, “Digital Marketing” is one of those terms with which we all have a feeling that we know what it means, but when it comes to nailing it down we somehow get stuck. In the end, it is not clear which types of digital marketing we are talking about. So instead of going for something soft like – it is related to internet marketing – or – a summarizing term for all online marketing activities – lets explain what exactly the term “Digital Marketing” means.
Simply, “Digital Marketing” are all marketing activities that use digital devices but that definitely includes online marketing activities – but honestly speaking, that also includes some traditional marketing activities, too. And that is wonderful, because it would be a great mistake to find out that online marketing activities are totally detached from all other marketing activities, so that any great marketing campaign will “with no hesitation” combine the best of both worlds.
To give you a thorough understanding of what the term “Digital marketing” includes, there are 10 most important types of digital marketing that you’ve to know about all of them before you decide what types of marketing you are going to include in your digital marketing strategy, so please don’t just focus on one type of digital marketing as most successful digital marketing solutions follow a multi-channel approach.
1st Social Media Marketing.
This is where we are going to start our list of types of digital marketing, social Media certainly has a rightfully earned place in this list because it’s on the top of the list of “Digital marketing“. Simply “Social Media Marketing” is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service.
Which means all sharing of information and engagement with followers, fans, partners or even competitors on social media platforms with the main goal of promoting your products is part of digital marketing. Basically, social media marketing is the targeted use of social media conversations to increase awareness for a brand or product.
But to be successful with social media marketing you have to fully understand the one social network you want to use for your marketing. As each social network has unique features, communication best practices, and content that users like, some social networks will work great for your situation, product and content – others won’t.
Nowadays, almost all digital marketing strategies utilize social marketing one way or the other, but not all types of business have to use ALL available social channels or take a lot of manual action. Sometimes focusing on one or two social networks and adding marketing automation to those activities will make it much more efficient.
2nd Content Marketing.
Content marketing is an art of using attractive content in a form of storytelling and valuable information to increase brand awareness with the main goal of reaching the target audience to take a profitable action. Content marketing mainly aims at building relationships with potential customers and becoming a partner rather than an advertiser, which means that content marketing is often used in inbound marketing strategies through a content strategy that focuses on providing value to the target audience with the needed content.
Basically, Content Marketing strongly relies on content distribution, as well as Content marketing can rarely be seen totally separated from other types of digital marketing that can fill the content distribution part.
3rd. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The term SEO is the process of optimizing content or websites so that they show up in search results in search engines like Google. Moreover, search engines decide which websites to show for a search term based on certain keywords mentioned on the website and links that refer to this website. Which means that SEO has a lot to do with using the right keywords or key phrases in the copy of a website or within the content you want to show in organic search and getting links to this website or content.
But what you’ve to know is that, there are multiple strategies for optimizing website(s) for search engines, and it certainly involves a lot more than shady link building. As some optimizations are accepted by Google and others are regarded rather shady and may result in Google penalizing all the websites.
As simply as that, when you are successful with SEO it is going to fuel itself, which means; More traffic from search means more visitors, more visitors means more returning visitors and more links, more links means better search rankings and that leads to increase in traffic, that is how it should really work.
4th. Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
As the term SEO means the process of getting unpaid traffic from search engines, SEM simply means to use paid advertising to get traffic from search engines. The most common form of search engine marketing is probably Google Ads for the simple reason that Google is so far the most used search engine.
Simply, In SEM the marketer usually pays the search engine a predefined amount of money for showing a marketing message at different social media platforms within the search results for specific keywords or phrases. Paid search or SEM is a form of Pay-Per-Click advertising and it is one of the main parts of digital advertising.
5th. Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC).
It’s a bit similar to SEM other forms of PPC advertising also describe marketing methods, where the marketer pays for each click on a link to the client’s website. It’s also apart from search engines, almost all social networks offer the opportunity for Pay-Per-Click advertising. These ads then appear in the feed of the targeted social media users.
On a side Note: Many of these activities cannot be clearly separated. The lines between the various types of digital (online) marketing are often blurred.
6th. Affiliate Marketing.
Simply, affiliate marketing is a performance-based type of digital marketing; in contrast to PPC advertising with affiliate marketing, the advertiser does not pay for traffic but rather for conversions. The rates are usually higher but the risk on the side of the advertiser is limited since he only pays for conversions.
Moreover, Affiliate marketing is popular with bloggers and high-traffic website owners who make money from selling other people’s products to their audience.
7th. Email Marketing.
Email marketing is one of the best converting marketing channels. By sending regular updates to your email subscribers you can build and nurture a relationship by providing value with your email updates you can build trust – eventually, you will also be able to turn a percentage of your audience into customers.
On a side note, email marketing is far more than buying an email list and bombarding them with promotional messages or a one-time advertising spot in someone else’s email newsletter.
Moreover, the best results from email marketing will always be achieved with a list of subscribers you personally earned and nurtured after then your email list can easily turn into your best digital marketing asset and an email campaign can drive sales.
8th. Radio advertising.
The motto of that type of advertising is that “You know what I am referring to, don’t you?” Those breaks in your favorite music program where someone tells you what car to buy or what cleaner to use, some of these spots can be rather annoying, a select few manage to be entertaining – at least when you hear them the first time.
There is still more to radio advertising: For instance, you can sponsor a program.
9th. Television advertising.
While we are getting more and more getting used to finding ways to omit having to actually watch TV commercials there is still some marketing success in TV advertising, but what you need to keep in mind is that advertising via TV offers very limited targeting options.
10th Mobile Phone Advertising.
Surely, many of the above types of digital marketing can take place on your mobile phone and that is called mobile marketing.
You are probably using Facebook, Instagram, and Google on your mobile phone, after all, but there are some other types of marketing on your mobile phone that so far would not fit into any of the mentioned categories which is “mobile advertising”. As SMS advertising has been around for some time now.
WhatsApp as a marketing channel is growing, and with technology like Bluetooth still, on the rise, the marketing and advertising options for mobile especially in local marketing have by far not yet been fully leveraged.
Last but not least, if you want to decide on your digital marketing strategy, you should be aware of these 10, and you’ve to choose Localz, as we firmly know the best that is suited for your purposes.